Curriculum, Instruction, and the Common Core State Standards

Abstract

The history of reform efforts designed to improve the American educational system is long and multi-focused. Nearly since its inception, public education’s basic tenets, such as purpose, curriculum, pedagogy, access, and assessment, have served as targets for reform. More recently, the past 30 years have seen three major reform efforts shape American educational policy and implementation. The first, A Nation at Risk, and the second, the No Child Left Behind Act, were launched and supported by the federal government. The third and current educational reform effort is the Common Core State Standards. Developed under the leadership of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association (NGA & CCSSO, 2010), this reform is defined as the culmination of an extended, broad-based effort to fulfill the charge issued by the states to create the next generation of K–12 standards in order to help ensure that all students are college and career ready in literacy no later than the end of high school. (p. 3) This issue of the Journal of Curriculum and Instruction reflects the attention garnered by the implementation of CCSS implementation and other reform efforts and includes articles that address the impact of reform initiative on various aspects of curriculum and instruction.